Esu And Lesu

"The Sky People."

"Ruori recognized Bispo Don Carlos Ermosillo, a high priest of that Esu Carito who seemed cognate with the Maurai Lesu Haristi." (p. 16)

A Maurai philosopher:

"'Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.'"

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XI, p. 124.

 

Shark-toothed Nan is the Destroyer. Bishop Ermosillo's people have retained Christianity whereas the Maurai have created a new mythology.

 

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, the Exaltationists rebel against a civilization that, to them, has lasted so long as to become unendurable.

 

(We received financial compensation for the recent loss of internet access.)

 

(This evening, I should have been in a zoom meeting on how the left should respond to war in Ukraine but I couldn't get in. Instead, I critiqued Stieg Larsson's fictional chronology here. See also Two Cars. I should return to the Maurai early next month.)

"When the Assault was Intended to the City"

"The Sky People."

(For the title of this post, see here.)

Scanning S' Anton from above through a telescope, Loklann plans the attack on the spot:

men from his ship, the Buffalo, will parachute onto the plaza in front of the temple (cathedral);

the Stormcloud men will attack a large nearby building that might be a chief's dwelling;

Coyote will attack what look like barracks and parade ground;

Witch of Heaven men will land on the docks, seize defense guns and the strange ship and join the attack on the barracks;

Fire Elk men will land inside the east gate and send a detachment to secure the south gate, thus preventing escape by civilians;

from the plaza, Loklann will send reinforcements where needed.

Having given these orders, he jumps over the rail.

"The Sky People"

Poul Anderson, "The Sky People" IN Anderson, Maurai And Kith (New York, 1982), pp. 9-71.

If we cannot, for the time being, grind Poul Anderson's "Progress" into even finer particles, then we should turn to his first Maurai story, "The Sky People." I first read both "The Sky People" and "The Game of Glory" in Venture sf magazine, not yet suspecting that each of these stories was an installment of a different future history series.

As a rover fleet of the Sky People approaches and prepares to attack the Meycan city of S' Anton, Loklann sunna Holber, captain of the Buffalo, sees in the harbor a monstrous ship with seven tall masts and an unusual arrangement of sails. Although we do not know it yet, this is a ship of the Sea People called the Maurai and this series belongs to them, not to the Sky People.

We appreciate the descriptions of dawn light tinting cathedral spires rose and flashing off the gilt figureheads of the airships while regretting that the airships are about to raid the city.

Yet Another Fight Scene

"Progress," pp. 111-114.

Lorn reaches for his knife.

Keanu grabs Lorn's wrist.

Lorn pulls free and wields his knife.

Keanu deflects the knife with his left arm.

He pokes toward Lorn's solar plexus with his right.

Lorn's left palm chops Keanu's wrist.

Lorn grabs Keanu's knife and throws it out the porthole.

He asks what's got into Keanu and looks around for Alisabeta.

Keanu goes for Lorn's dagger with both arms.

He pulls Lorn's fingers open.

The dagger drops.

Keanu kicks it away.

Lorn grapples him.

Alisabeta snatches the knife.

Lorn punches.

Keanu ducks and takes it on the skull.

Lorn lets go of Keanu.

Keanu goes for a stranglehold.

Lorn kicks Keanu in the stomach.

Keanu lurches away.

Alisabeta runs onto the deck.

She sees men approaching.

She returns to the engine room.

Keanu and Lorn roll on the deck.

Alisabeta picks up a wrench but then throws it aside.

She pulls off a garment. folds it and draws it around Lorn's throat.

She twists.

Lorn releases Keanu.

Keanu throttles Lorn unconscious, then binds and gags him.

Alisabeta proposes to capture the men who approach.

Did we need all that detail?

I remember it because I have summarized it.

Progress?

"Progress."

First, I do not think that the policy suggested here would work but let's think about it.

Are politicians locked into power politics or might they give a lead in a different direction? It would make no sense to declare, "We will totally disarm and call on all other governments to do the same," but why not sign non-aggression pacts and agree to dismantle instruments of genocide and to divert those resources from destruction to life?

In "Progress," when the Maurai seize the Beneghali fusion plant, might they:

propose joint management of the plant by the Maurai Federation and Beneghal?

maintain Maurai use of biotechnology?

propose modernization but not rearming of Beneghal?

propose alleviation of poverty without cultural homogenization in other countries?

 

A new start for mankind.

 

OK. It wouldn't work. The Beneghali would just wage war to regain the fusion plant or avenge its destruction.

?

Nothing could be more ambiguous than the ending of Poul Anderson's "Progress." On the concluding half page, at the end of the third last paragraph, the Merican astrophysicist says:

"'If your society can't handle something big and new like the tamed atom, why, by Oktai, you've proved your society isn't worth preserving.'" (p. 137)

So is that what we are supposed to think? Poul Anderson's characters usually do welcome newness. However, Anderson does not tell us what to think and certainly not in this case. The story ends with a question:

"'Our society can't handle something new?' she murmured. 'Oh, my dear Lorn, what do you think we were doing that day?'" (ibid.)

Handling the new by destroying it? I don't think so. But nor do I think that the reader is expected to give my answer. The question is left open.

Next, I will try to suggest what else might have been done.

Interference

A non-interference policy is familiar in sf: Star Trek; Time Patrol; James Blish's Okies.

Poul Anderson's Maurai have it both ways:

"'Your Federation swears so piously it doesn't intervene in the development of other cultures.'

"'Except when self-defense forces us to,' Alisabeta said. 'And only a minimum.'"

-"Progress," p. 103.

 

"'We think Maurai interference should be kept to an absolute minimum.'

"'Nevertheless,' he said, sharp-toned, 'you do interfere.'

"'True,' she agreed."

-ibid., p.136.

 

In this also they resemble the Patrol:

 

"...the truth about his own corps, which was his own family and nation and reason for living...They weren't merely safeguarding a perhaps divinely ordained history which led to them. Here and there they, too, meddled, to create their own past...."

-Poul Anderson, "The Only Game in Town" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 129-171 AT 7, p. 171.

 

"Everard sat straight. The stem of his pipe broke in his fist. He ignored the coals that fell onto the lush carpet. "'Wait a minute!' he cried. 'You've been tinkering with reality yourself?'

"'Under authorization,' he heard; and his jaws locked on silence."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART TWO, 1902 A. D., p. 122. 

What The Ancients Did Wrong

"Progress."

"'That's another lesson we've learned from history. The ancients could have saved themselves...'" (p. 136)

History and the ancients are us. This is a Maurai speaking. So how could we have saved ourselves?

"'...if they'd had the courage - been hard-hearted enough - to act before being snowballed. If the democracies had suppressed every aggressive dictatorship in its infancy; or if they had simply enforced their ideal of an armed world government at the time when they had the strength to do -...'" (ibid.)

I don't think so. How democratic are the democracies? Are they innocent of aggression? They have allied themselves with dictatorships. Would democracies retain their democracy if they suppressed and enforced?

Poul Anderson is right to use characters in futuristic sf to comment on the present. If we do not agree with this Maurai commentator, then what do we propose?

Another example of futuristic comment: in Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, set in Fascist Britain in 1997, one character has heard that the Leader is "absolutely barking." Another comments, "Remember all those things he said when he was Chief Constable." When this was written, it was a highly topical remark.

Sf is about the present.

Mauri Period Tech

"Progress."

(i) Many airships, each with a hundred-meter-long gas bag, control fins and propellers.

(ii) Centuries of forest management.

(iii) Trimarans with engines, propellers, automatic instruments, a computer and complicated sails.

(iv) Sunpower collectors.

(v) Radio.

(vi) Dielectric energy accumulators.

(vii) Fuel cells.

(viii) A hidden fusion plant - but the Maurai destroy it.

(ix) Catapulted jellied fish oil bombs.

(x) Streams of small sharp rocks fired from flywheel guns.

(Pirates do not have gunpowder so merchant ships avoid the expense.)

(xi) Rocket launchers.

(xii) A large observatory that photographs an ancient artificial satellite.

(xiii) A computer using artificial organic tissue.

(xiv) Surgically implanted miniature radios hooked into the nervous system, powered by body heat, simulating telepathy.

No space tech.

The Dangers Of Brahmard Nuclear Fusion

"Progress."

With nuclear fusion, the Brahmards would have been able to manufacture endless war materials and thus to displace the Maurai as the leading world power. If the Maurai had competed militarily using the same technology, then this would moved the world toward a Second War of Judgment. Even if the Maurai had not tried to develop nuclear power, others would have done so. Also, the missionary Brahmards would have tried to convert everyone else to their industrial-urban ideal whereas the Maurai have learned to value and protect cultural and technological diversity. A Maurai cites four historical examples of creative cultural interaction:

Egypt and Crete in the Eighteenth Dynasty;

Phoenicia, Persia and Greece in the classical period;

Nippon and Sara in the Nara period;

the current period when Maurai, Mericans, Okkaidans and Sberayks find different solutions to common problems.

OK. This is one reason why Poul Anderson could write historical fiction and future histories and I can't.

Night Falls

"Progress," pp. 90-91.

Tropical twilight is short.

Darkness is deep and blue.

Sea glimmers.

Land is black.

Stars are brilliant.

Candlelight is yellow.

Bats dart.

A lizard scuttles.

Wild pigs grunt.

A peacock screams.

Insects chirp.

The cool air is jasmine-scented.

 

I summarize with a list in order to demonstrate the number of distinct details in this descriptive paragraph, including four senses or five if we count the dinner that the characters eat although, unfortunately, this is not described. (We had a Food Thread a while back.)

Present And Future Conflicts

Returned from a Thai meal, I watch news of a war while friends hold a musical evening with food and drink downstairs and I continue to read about an international conflict in a fictional future. The Maurai who destroy the Beneghali fusion plant must disguise themselves as pirates to avoid open war between their Federation and Beneghal. The concluding section of "Progress" is set several years later during the eighth International Physical Society convention in Wellantoa. Thus, even this single story conveys a sense of the passage of time in a future history. The Merican astrophyicist who had helped Beneghal and one of the Maurai spies who had uncovered the secret fusion plant debate the issue. As with real life conflicts, the reader must reflect and approach a conclusion. (Alternatively, we can just enjoy the story or reinforce our existing prejudices. It is up to us.)

Surely nuclear fusion could have been kept and used for the common good? But Maurai psychodynamicists must have predicted that that would not happen.

In another of Anderson's fictional timelines, the Time Patrol suppresses a matter transmuter because of the harm that it could do. The Maurai and the Patrol have some things in common.

Brahmards

"Progress."

Brahmins were a hereditary priestly caste. Brahmards are a scientocratic elite, recruited young with psychological tests to weed out the insufficiently dedicated/fanatical. We must not stand in the way of progress.

The Brahmard symbol is Siva which they interpret as destruction leading to rebirth.

"'...they enjoy being a boss caste. But somebody has to be.'" (p. 106)

Does somebody? The speaker makes the point that:

"'No Hinjan country has the resources or the elbow room to govern itself as loosely as you Sea People do.'" (p. 106)

Maybe. But there are still collective choices to be made about forms of government.

The speaker is a Merican addressing a Maurai about Beneghal. In these few lines in this single short story, Poul Anderson makes us feel as if we have read a novel about these countries with their conditions and traditions. I am even more convinced than before that the Maurai History is accurately describable as a very condensed future history series.

The Brahmards want to return Beneghal, then the world, to where they were before the War of Judgment. The Maurai think that this will lead to another War of Judgment. Who is right? Anderson addresses real issues in fictional settings.

Orion And Time

 

Orion Shall Rise has to be a work of fiction written by Poul Anderson and set in the Maurai History. The true story of how mankind gets back into space centuries after the War of Judgment is told in There Will Be Time.

Let me leave that thought with you all while I race out to eat with a former work colleague this evening. Sorry to be in such a rush. Hopefully more blog time soon.

High is heaven and holy.

Jets

Jack Havig's "Uncle Jack" takes him in a large propeller-less "jet" aircraft where they see a film in Technicolor.

"[Ranu] had read of jet aircraft that outpaced the sun, before the nuclear war."

-"Progress," p. 101.

 

Again, the change of perspective is extraordinary. In this example, we jump straight from a pre- to a post-jet period.

 

Ranu has seen a reconstructed film of a jet plane and does:

 

"...not understand how anyone could want to sit locked in a howling coffin..."

-ibid.

 

He prefers to experience the sky by clinging to a blimp like the Neil Gaiman character who wants to go to sea only in a ship with sails.

 

Read Anderson's and Gaiman's multiverses.

Neurons And Sensations

Because of artificial intelligence, and more specifically artificial consciousness, in sf, we have discussed the philosophical mind-body problem on this blog.

Can consciousness be explained? Explanation is objective whereas consciousness is subjective. When neurons interact chemically, scientists can objectively observe the neurons and the chemicals connecting them. When neuronic interactions cause sensations, scientists can objectively observe the neuronic interactions but cannot observe either the sensations or any connection between neurons and sensations. If sensations were objectively observable, then they would not be subjective sensations. 

It seems that scientists can explain how neurons affect each other but not how objective neurons cause subjective consciousness.

Maurai And Time Travelers

Both the Maurai and the Time Patrol try to prevent something from happening. However, the Maurai series has no continuing characters. Instead, the Maurai culture and policies are represented by different individuals centuries apart. Also, the Maurai do not suspect that they are observed by time travelers who in any case differ in every respect from the Time Patrol: time-consuming time journeys by mutant time travelers in an immutable timeline as against instantaneous technological time jumps in a mutable timeline.

Today and tomorrow look like being busy so this might be the last post for a while.

Changing Perspectives

"For centuries after the War of Judgment, the Annaman Islands lay deserted."

-"Progess," p. 84.

 

In this short story, the War of Judgment is a major historical event.

"The War of Judgment, he said, would by no means be the simple capitalist-versus-Communist slugfest which most of us imagined in the 1950's."

-There Will Be Time, V, p. 53.

In this novel, the War of Judgment is a future event discussed by a twentieth century time traveler who knows that it will happen but has yet to learn how and why it will happen. Poul Anderson pulls his readers back to a completely different perspective.

"...missions from Awaii had originally turned those aerial pirates to more peaceable ways."

-"Progress," p. 88.

 

The first Maurai story is called "The Sky People." The pacification of its title characters, who are sky pirates, shows that "Progress" is set a long time later.

Dense History

"Progress."

Reading the Maurai short stories, we are plunged into a dense future history. Two hundred years before "Progress":

the Maurai used multi-masted hemaphrodite sea craft;

 

the Mericans had no anti-catalyst for the hydrogen in their blimps;

 

the Hinjan subcontinent suffered chaotic folk migrations.

 

Now, radically designed new Maurai ships use automatic instruments and computers and the Beneghali Brahmads travel in blimps. The symbol of the Brahmad scientocracy is a golden Siva, signifying destruction and rebirth, whereas the Maurai flag is the Cross and Stars: old symbols in new settings.

The Maurai series is much shorter than other future histories but more concentrated.

 

Brahmads remind us of Hinduraj in the Carthaginian timeline of the Time Patrol universe and in SM Stirling's Emberverse.

N'Zealann And Lohannaso

"The ship was a trimaran. and huge....

"Captain Rewi Lohannaso held an engineering degree from the University of Wellantoa in N'Zealann. He spoke several languages, and his Ingliss was not the debased dialect of some Merican tribe..."

-There Will Be Time, XI, p. 117.

"Ranu had been born and bred in N'Zealann; his Maurai genes were too mixed with the old fretful Ingliss....

"Sailors couldn't be bothered with glamorous tresses, even on a trimaran as broad and stable as this...

"The Lohannaso Shippers' Association, to which she and Ranu were both related by blood, preferred to minimize crews...

"'Wellantoa registry.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Progress" IN Anderson, Maurai And Kith (New York, 1982), pp. 73-137 AT pp. 74-75, 80.

 

Thus, the Maurai, like Constantinople, are incorporated into the There Will Be Time timeline. We read "Progress" without imagining time travelers lurking in the background - or, alternatively, we can imagine this, having read There Will Be Time.

The Book And The Cover

The cover image in the previous post is appropriate because it shows a spaceship (Kith) and a sea (relevant to the Maurai but also the second Kith story). The cover of my copy (New York, 1982) (see this post and here) proclaims "The People of the Sea and The People of the Stars..." An accurate blurb. However, the back cover claims:

"After Armageddon the People of the Sea created a new kind of civilization, one based on the integrity of Life and the moral as well as pragmatic necessity of conservation. But the Sky People live by a different vision, and they have come to enforce it...."

This blurb, like the title, wrongly suggests that the Maurai and the Kith coexist and interact. In fact, the first Maurai story is entitled "The Sky People" and this title refers not to the Kith but to a group of sky pirates who will find common cause with the Maurai.

Titles and blurbs can mislead. In HG Wells's works, The War Of The Worlds and The War In The Air might have been two installments of a future wars series whereas, in fact, they are distinct and discrete narratives.

 

Maurai And Kith

We read the second Maurai story, "Progress," as a work of fiction. There Will Be Time enables us to reread it as a work of fiction that is written, but also based on some future historical facts, in the timeline of There Will Be Time just as, in the Technic History timeline, some installments of The Earth Book Of Stormgate are works of fiction or fictionalized accounts of historical events.

Poul Anderson's Maurai and Kith Histories are surprisingly similar in structure. Although three Maurai and two Kith stories were collected as Maurai And Kith, a third Kith story was written later. Each of the series is a short but genuine future history with installments set generations or centuries apart. In both cases, a novel not fully consistent with the short stories was added later although the Kith novel incorporates revised versions of the first and third stories of that series.

Uniquely, however, the Maurai History is linked to the time travel novel, There Will Be Time.

What Happens In The Future?

There Will Be Time, XII.

The War of Judgment destroys civilization in the Northern Hemisphere. A new Southern civilization develops biological technologies and opposes nuclear power. A twentieth century time traveler, Jack Havig, visits this Pacific Federation and describes it to his family doctor, Robert Anderson, who relays this future scenario as a fictional premise to his distant relative, Poul Anderson. This second Anderson names the Southern civilization the Maurai Federation and writes several stories about it. In one of these stories, the Maurai mount an undercover operation against a secret fusion generator. Havig later discovers that this in fact happens. However, Poul Anderson has changed names and other details and has:

"'...guessed wrong more often than right.'" (p. 129)

The stories never circulated widely and were soon forgotten. Havig comments on sf and its occasional lucky guesses. Much food for thought in the 2022 of our timeline.

Evening, Sunset And Autumn

There Will Be Time, XVI.

Descriptions of natural beauty are welcome in fiction. Descriptions of natural endings, showing the passage of time, are relevant and resonant in time travel fiction.

Poul Anderson describes "October country":

flames in a hearth;

noisy wind;

sunshine in clear air;

tossing colorful trees;

geese trumpeting;

leaves capering;

a quiet old road;

Morgan Woods;

a gurgling creek;

a squirrel in a century-old oak;

chilly air;

damp odors.

 

Later:

 

sunset flaring gold;

mumbling wind;

ticking clock;

wind flowing like a river;

"...high autumnal stars..." (p.176)

1970-1973

There Will Be Time, XIV-XVI.

Havig and Leonce visit Robert Anderson:

on April 12, 1970;

in March, 1971;

on October 31, 1971.

There Will Be Time was published in 1973. Its Foreword informs us that Robert Anderson died:

"Late last year..." (p. 7)

 

But, in October, 1971, Leonce tells Robert Anderson:

 

"'...you're good for a fair while yet!'" (XVI, p. 173)

 

Does one year count as a fair while or is the fictional publication date of There Will Be Time later than the real date?

 

In 1970, Robert Anderson advises the Havigs to build an anti-Eyrie time travel group. In March, 1971, they tell him about their group. In October, they tell him that they have defeated the Eyrie, that Phase Two, which they call Polaris House, is theirs and that they will leave Earth. That ends his association with them.

Possible And Impossible

There Will Be Time, XIV.

Havig and Leonce visit Robert Anderson. They do their best to cover their tracks so that their enemies, the Eyrie, do not learn of their association with him. A week after the visit, younger Havig phones Anderson and asks if there was any trouble on the visit. There was not.

Imagine: Havig phones and asks. Robert Anderson replies, "Yes. You and Leonce approached my front door and were both shot dead by Eyrie agents." In that case, the Havigs would stay away. But, in that case, Robert Anderson would reply, "You didn't visit." And, in that case, the Havigs would know to stay away.

Certain sequences of events are possible:

(i) Havig phones. Robert Anderson says that there was no trouble. The Havigs visit.

(ii) Havig phones. Robert Anderson says that they didn't visit. They stay away.

(iii) Havig phones. Robert Anderson says that they were shot dead. Wanting to commit suicide, they visit. (They won't do this! I am just trying to list what is logically possible.)

(iv) Havig phones. Robert Anderson, wanting the Havigs dead, says that there was no trouble. They visit and are shot dead. (Again, he won't do this! etc.)

Other sequences are impossible:

(v) Havig phones. Robert Anderson says, truthfully, that there was no trouble. They visit and are shot dead.

(vi) Havig phones. Robert Anderson says, truthfully, that they were shot dead. They stay away.

Wallis Through Two Hundred Years

There Will Be Time.

Confusingly, Caleb Wallis time travels through the history of the Eyrie twice. Let us differentiate between "younger Wallis" and "older Wallis," although the dividing line will be indistinct.

Younger Wallis...

...founds the Eyrie;

makes an inspection tour of its two-hundred year history;

near the end of that time, meets older Wallis as a very old man;

makes one visit to the underground high tech Phase Two;

makes some exploratory trips to the very different further future which he believes is Phase Three;

returns to the early Eyrie;

writes a short history of the future;

makes some further trips to the later Eyrie;

learns that older Wallis and some of his lieutenants will disappear.

 

After older Wallis's disappearance, no one will see Wallis again apart from the single trip that younger Wallis has already made to Phase Two.

 

Older Wallis...

...having completed the inspection tour, lives through the two hundred year history of the Eyrie;

does not live for two hundred years but time hops in concert with his lieutenants;

is visited by younger Wallis;

disappears.

Younger Wallis on his inspection tour is not told of Havig's capture and escape. Older Wallis knows because he interrogated the captive on the day before his escape. However, not having been told by older Wallis, he does not tell younger Wallis.

Escape Through Time

There Will Be Time, XII-XIII.

A wire rope from a ring around his ankle to a staple in a wall holds Havig in a tower room. He cannot time travel while held in place. Time traveling from a few days earlier when the room was empty, Leonce arrives at night with a flashlight. By spending some days in the immediate future, she has already confirmed that Havig will escape and also has seemed not to have been involved in that escape. She cuts the wire with a hacksaw. He time travels to the following morning and pretends still to be attached to the wall until a guard gives him breakfast and departs. Then Havig returns to the previous night, arriving in the dark room before his slightly younger self has departed to morning. Holding hands to stay together, they time travel to a few nights earlier when the room was empty and the door unlocked. Then, still time traveling, they walk downstairs, across the courtyard and out of the castle, stopping to breathe only at night. (They could have passed through a locked door while time traveling.) They flee into the pre-Colombian past.

This is how to evade captors who can time travel to check when you escaped. Accepting that Havig has escaped, the Eyrie will not waste man-hours trying to recapture him.

Tracking Ideas

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, the Time Machine goes to the end of life on Earth and returns.

In Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," the time projector goes to the end of the universe and beyond.

In Anderson's Tau Zero, a time dilated spaceship goes to the end of the universe and beyond.

I used to track ideas through sf works by different authors but it does not follow that earlier works directly influenced later works. James Blish did not know of Edmond Hamilton's Cities In The Air when he wrote Cities In Flight and incorporated a reference to Jonathon Swift's flying island only when he remembered it. John Christopher wrote that his Tripods Trilogy unconsciously plagiarized Wells' The War Of The Worlds.

However, Anderson directly modeled his Psychotechnic History on Robert Heinlein's Future History and his Operation Chaos was directly inspired by Heinlein's Magic, Inc. Sf authors develop alternative implications of each other's ideas.

The Time Machine And There Will Be Time

I have found more than expected in common between The Time Machine and There Will Be Time, mainly the time-dilation-type time travel, the progression of a nineteenth century man into the future and speculation about the future of mankind. Poul Anderson adds some medieval history, some reflections on several decades of the twentieth century and some complicated circular causality. He is Wells Plus. Several other time travel narratives by Anderson also have Wellsian elements. We approach the end of a rereading of There Will Be Time, not having expected to extract as much as this from it.

Time Dilation On Earth

Wells and Anderson vividly describe the world as fast forwarded by time travelers. We have summarized these passages before so will sub-summarize them here.

The Time Traveler

Mrs. Watchett shoots past like a rocket.

Night comes like the turning out of a lamp.

Night follows day like the flapping of a black wing.

The laboratory falls away.

The sun hops across the sky, a day per minute.

Then the Time Traveler cannot see anything moving on Earth.

The moon spins through her quarters.

The stars circle.

Night and day merge into grey.

The sun becomes a fiery streak, a brilliant arch.

Trees grow, change and pass away like vapors.

Huge buildings rise and pass like dreams.

The surface of the earth melts and flows.

Speed dials move faster and faster.

The sun-belt sways up and down in a minute or less.

Green follows snow.

Great buildings rise.

A richer green remains as winter ceases.

Havig Leaving Constantinople

Xenia cries out and becomes still.

Someone enters.

Confusion.

The chamber is empty.

Strangers are in it.

The house is torn down.

There is a larger house, which burns.

Faces after faces fill building after building.

Incandescence.

Drifting radioactive ash.

Ruins.

Havig's Group Travels From Its Main Base

Shadows reel past.

Seasons blow across hills.

Glaciers grind heights to plains.

They withdraw in snowstorms.

Mastodons drink from lakes.

Lakes become swamps, then soil that feeds horses and camels.

Giant sloths graze treetops.

Glaziers return and withdraw.

Bison darken prairies.

Spear-wielding pioneers arrive.

Great Wnter.

Great Springtime.

Hunters with bows.

Great forests.

Conquerors, plowing, sowing and laying railroads.

Time Dilation And Time Travel

For astronauts who accelerate until they approach light speed, time is dilated or stretched so that, e.g., a second within the ship begins and ends simultaneously with a century or more outside the ship. Like time travel, time dilation is one way to survive into the far future without aging too much in the process. See Poul Anderson's Tau Zero. For most ideas that we discuss here, there is usually an example in Anderson's works.

Now imagine that time dilation happens not to a spaceship crew speeding through space but to an individual who remains stationary, seated or standing, on the Earth's surface. We are talking about HG Wells' Time Traveler and Poul Anderson's Jack Havig. These characters are called "time travelers" although mere time dilation does not qualify them for that description.

There are two differences between the accelerating astronauts and these "time travelers." First, the time travelers are not accelerating. If they did, then they would soon pass escape velocity and then rapidly leave Earth and even the Solar System. Secondly, the time travelers can reverse the direction of their dilation. They can experience not only 1901-2000 in a second but also 2000-1901 in a second. It is this reversal ability that makes them "time travelers." The Time Traveler enduring for a second while everything around him endures for a century or more is clearly living and moving much more slowly than anyone else and he acknowledges that the slowest snail passes him much too swiftly for him to see it. Why then does he claim to experience rapid motion and acceleration so that the Time Machine swings around and falls over when he halts it abruptly?

"Where Is Your Saint?"

There Will Be Time, XII.

When the Eyrie men apprehend Jack Havig in Constantinople, his wife, Xenia, asks:

"'Who are they, Jon?...What do they want? Where is your saint?'" (p. 133)

Havig's "saint" was himself multi-locating to fight Eyrie men on a previous occasion. This time, two of them hold his arms so that he is unable to time travel. But Xenia's question shows the limits of her religion. She believes that saints can intervene. In Zen, Bodhisattvas are personifications of wisdom and compassion, not beings that can intervene to offer practical help. Meditation (maybe) helps us to cope with bad experiences but does not put us in touch with supernatural benefactors.

Havig's Further Vision

There Will Be Time, XI.

Beyond the period of the Maurai Federation:

pastoral landscapes;

 

spire humming and shimmering with enigmatic energies;

 

enormous gliding sky ships more of force than of metal;

 

incomprehensible symbols on statues, in books and across lintels.

 

Havig doubts that Wallis's organization, the Eyrie, which seeks to control the future, could have brought forth those machines and also wonders whether a few technic masters tyrannize a lofty-minded and passive populace. He has glimpsed a future but does not understand it.

So far, to me, it sounds like a good mix of environmentalism and technology but obviously Havig needs to learn more.

The Unknown

There Will Be Time, X.

Jack Havig says:

"'...we'd better take care to stay within the area of unknownness, which is where our freedom lies.'" (p. 114)

Fortunately, there is a lot of unknown. I have read that Godel demonstrated that omniscience is impossible. My argument to this conclusion is as follows:

if everything were known, then nothing would be unknown;

 

if nothing were unknown, then nothing would be future;

 

if nothing were future, then everything would be either past or present;

 

if everything were either past or present, then, at the next moment, everything would be past;

 

if everything were past, then we would be dead;

 

if we were dead, then nothing would be known;

 

therefore, if everything were known, then nothing would be known;

 

reductio ad absurdum;

 

therefore, it is impossible that everything is known.

 

This represents the reasoning of someone who has studied philosophy but has not worked with it professionally: a combination of subtlety and blunt instrument.

 

Consciousness is a continual interaction between known and unknown. The unknown becomes known but as a continual process. When that stops, we are dead. James Blish's Service knows what is in the messages that it receives from the future but that is only a very small part of what is. Prescience is not omniscience. They, and we, act in the unknown.

Does God Intervene?

There Will Be Time, X.

When Havig recounts how circumstances thwarted his attempts to change the past, Robert Anderson asks:

"'Does God intervene, do you think?'

"'No, no, no. I suppose it's simply a logical impossibility to change the past, same as it's logically impossible for a uniformly colored spot to be both red and green. And every instant in time is the past of infinitely many other instants. That figures.'" (p. 114)

 

We all know that either God does not exist or He does not run the universe by direct interventions. But why should He intervene? The propositions that Hitler was assassinated in 1942 in Timeline A and that Hitler was not assassinated then but instead committed suicide in 1945 in Timeline A are logically inconsistent. No one needs to intervene to prevent both propositions from being true. They cannot both be true.

The same logic applies to unknown events. It is not known whether a time traveler arrived at a particular time on a particular date in an unoccupied house. If he did not arrive there-then, then he will not succeed in arriving there-then. But, if he did arrive there-then, then he did arrive there-then. If p, then p. Not (p and not-p). (In logic, p is any proposition just as, in algebra, x or n is any number.)

Discontinuities III

Time travel in a single immutable timeline is logically odd. A time traveler learns that, if he tries to change the past, then something prevents him. Therefore, he stops trying. So then, in many cases, the fact that he did not even try to prevent an event is a sufficient reason why it occurred. Read Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.

And there is another factor, which Niffeneger also addresses. A time traveler can never be certain that he does inhabit a single immutable timeline. Maybe, if he tries to change another past event, then this time he will succeed and will therefore be unable to return to his preferred present. If he does not want to run any risk of this outcome, then he had better avoid meddling with the past: a one-man Time Patrol. However odd this sounds, none of it is logically inconsistent, which is all that should concern a philosopher.

 We have wandered away from Poul Anderson's texts but that is the nature of sf. We follow ideas through several authors' works and will soon return to Anderson.

Discontinuities II

See the combox for Discontinuities.

Multiple timelines means many four-dimensional space-time continua coexisting in parallel along a fifth dimension. A mutable timeline means a single continuum changing along a second temporal dimension. Let us suppose that we inhabit a single immutable timeline.

Poul Anderson

Multiple timelines: the Old Phoenix multiverse

Mutable timeline: the Time Patrol universe

An immutable timeline: There Will Be Time and The Corridors Of Time

 

In our (supposed) single immutable timeline:

If we now learn that, in 1942, an assassin left Britain intending to kill Hitler, then we know that, whatever else happened to that assassin, he failed in his mission. Something, some mishap, prevented him from killing Hitler. The situation is no different if we now learn that, five minutes ago, a time traveler departed into the past intending to kill Hitler. Some mishap (a heart attack, a malfunctioning time machine, God knows what) prevented him from killing Hitler. However, if a thousand or more time travelers set out to kill Hitler, then the laws of statistics would have to change to allow for the necessary number of mishaps.

Someone killing Hitler in 1942 if Hitler lived till 1945 is a logical contradiction. If a logical contradiction is unacceptable (it is) and if changed laws of statistics are also unacceptable, then it follows that, in an immutable timeline, time travel:

is impossible;

or does not happen;

or is very rare;

or happens but with major restrictions, e.g., is possible only into the very remote past;

etc.

Constantinople And The Maurai

Someone who borrowed Guardians Of Time said, "Other time travel writers just tell us that a character is in a particular past time but Anderson makes it real." His time travel fiction includes historical fiction. Jack Havig travels from the Eyrie in the twenty-first century to Constantinople in the thirteenth century. The text becomes rich in multi-sensory details. New characters live: the Constantinoplean family that Jack visits as Hauk Thomasson, a trader from Scandinavia.

Should sf writers link their time travel to their future histories? Heinlein and Asimov did it badly. Anderson did not link his long Time Patrol series to his longer Technic History but did link his short Maurai History to his single novel, There Will Be Time. This works.

We know of:

Constaninople from history;

the Maurai Federation from two other volumes by Anderson;

the Eyrie from There Will Be Time -

 

- and There Will Be Time pulls them all into a coherent narrative. 

Two Nineteenth Centurians

HG Wells' Time Traveler and Poul Anderson's Caleb Wallis are two nineteenth century time travelers. Compare their achievements. The Time Traveler travels to 802,701 A.D. and the further future and returns. Wallis makes his fortune, helps his younger self, contacts and recruits other time travelers, influences Wells, establishes a base in the twenty-first century, checks the two hundred year history of that base and some of the further future, then lives through those two hundred years, time hopping forward so that he is an old man by the end of that period.

Thus, of both men, it is true to say that they travel into the future but what a difference. Wells could not have proceeded directly to a plot as complex as Anderson's. Anderson could not have written as he did except on the basis of previous time travel fiction.

Both men are lost in time at the end of their respective narratives.

Wallis In The Future

Some of Poul Anderson's characters live indefinitely prolonged lifespans, some time travel and one group, the Time Patrol, does both. Caleb Wallis is a time traveler who wants to live forever. His history of the future concludes:

"Let us be satisfied to be God's agents of redemption. However, those who wish may cherish a private hope. Is it not possible that at last science will find a way to make the old young again, to make the body immortal? And by then, I have no doubt, time travel will be understood, may even be commonplace. Will not that wonderful future return and seek us out, who brought it into being, and give us our reward?'"

-There Will Be Time, p. 91.

For all his knowledge of the future, this is mere hope. He must spend a limited part of his lifespan checking the future, then the rest of his lifespan living through a small part of that future. All that he knows of his own life is that he will time jump through the two hundred years of the Eyrie, Phase One, and that he will be an old man at the end of it. He knows a little of later developments but not much and must merely believe that his organization will control the further future. Later, it is discovered that, near the end of Phase One, he will disappear - but where or when to?

Of course, Wallis cannot merely check the two hundred year history of Phase One and meet his elderly self at the end of it. He must check the future, meet himself, then return to the beginning of Phase One and live through that Phase, prolonging his rule by time hopping, to become that elderly self who will be visited by his younger self. What he does not know is that his elderly self will be drugged and controlled by Jack Havig's group. The future is not what it seems.

Histories Of The Future

Whereas we read fictional future histories, occasionally the fictional characters are able to read histories of their own futures.

One of the Last Men inspires Olaf Stapledon to write Last And First Men although Stapledon believes that it is fiction.

Raven dreams the historical text that Wells publishes as The Shape Of Things To Come.

The outer narrator publishes the Time Traveler's summary of the future of mankind and life on Earth.

"'At headquarters on Earth, there's a whole building full of specialists who are trying to construct a coherent history of the future from the beep, and speculate their way between the gaps, but for the really far future it's a sterile task.'"

-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), AN EPILOGUE, p. 127.

 

"Thereafter [Havig] was assigned to reread Wallis's history of the future, ponder it in the light of what he had witnessed...'"

-There Will Be Time, IX, p. 90.

 

Wallis's history is an interesting document that seems to record his triumphal progress through the future.

The Wreck Of The World

 

There Will Be Time, VII.

"North America, Europe, parts of Asia and South America, fewer parts of Africa, hit bottom because they were overextended. Let the industrial-agricultural-medical complexes they had built be paralyzed for the shortest whiles, and people would begin dying by millions. The scramble of survivors for survival would bring everything else down in wreck." (p. 75)

We have enjoyed sitting comfortably at home while reading about fictional heroes in danger of their lives and even about the deaths of millions in future catastrophes. Now I am persuaded that the paragraph quoted above might describe our immediate future.

Wallis tells Havig:

"'By now we've hundreds of agents, plus thousands of devoted commoners.'" (p. 76)

Does he mean temporal agents? That sounds like a lot after the difficulties he has had with recruitment. But we will read on and learn how big the Eyrie is.

Transpositions And Anticipations

There Will Be Time, VII.

Wallis contacted other time travelers in the nineteenth century by hiring agents to place ads which would attract attention from fellow mutants without using the phrase, "time traveler." Of course they did not use that phrase. The terms, "Time Machine," "time travelling" and "Time Traveller," were coined by HG Wells at the end of that century. I read parts of Mark Twain's turgid A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court if only to find out what terminology he had used: "transposition of epochs."

I would like to have read one of Wallis's ads and also to know how he had explained them to the young Englishman who wrote them for him. He chose someone late in the century to avoid "anticipations." We know that Wallis did share the time travel idea with this hired ad-writer. We also notice a similarity between their names.

"Time Patrol" opens with the ad that drew Manse Everard into the Time Patrol.

Meeting The Historical Jesus

There Will Be Time, VI.

"'You mean you've never considered seeking the historical Christ? I know you're not religious, but surely the mystery around him -'

"'Doc, what he was, or if he was, makes only an academic difference. What counts is what people through the ages have believed. My life expectancy isn't enough for me to do the pure research I'd like.'" (p. 56)

Havig could not be wronger. What people have believed counts and what he was or if he was counts - especially if some of what has been believed turned out to be true! If I have done my best to understand the historical Jesus and would jump at the chance to confirm or disconfirm my particular reconstruction of the origin of Christianity. I would also seek out the Buddha. Different questions arise there. No need to confirm or disconfirm an alleged resurrection. And meditation would remain valid whether or not the Buddha existed. But I would certainly seize on any chance to nail down the origin of Christianity. To start with, the ministry would not look anything like pictures in Bible story books but we already know that.

Traveling At Different Rates?

We will quote three passages from Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time and draw some conclusions.

(i) "'How long does it take? How many minutes per year, or whatever?'

"'No particular relationship. Depends on me. I feel the effort I'm exerting, and can gauge it roughly. I can move...faster...than otherwise.'" (IV, p. 37)

(ii) Two Eyrie agents hold Havig, their prisoner, as they travel uptime:

"They had substance to his senses, like his own body..." (XII, p. 133)

(iii) In Jerusalem, one Eyrie agent leads a group from the day of the Crucifixion to the twenty-first century. They stop when they see:

"...a kind of big billboard in the ruins, on which an indicator was set daily to the correct date." (VI, p. 64)

The group in Jerusalem depart together. If they stand close enough, then they continue to see each other while time traveling. Presumably they stop together immediately after midnight when they see their destination date appear on the billboard. But they will probably "travel" at different rates. Does it follow from this that one, maybe the leader, will get ahead of the others, will then lose sight of them while traveling and will arrive at 00:00 hours before any of others? No. One person cannot be at 00:00 before another. They must both be at 00:00 at 00:00. We must not think of the two millennia between the day of the Crucifixion and the twenty-first century as if they were a spatial distance with a number of three-dimensional bodies moving along it. The world lines of the time travelers extend from 33 A.D. to 2033 A.D. (or whichever year in the twenty-first century we are talking about). Each of the time travelers will be visible to all of the others throughout that period. The difference is that the one who "travels" faster experiences, e.g., one second per century whereas another who "travels" more slowly experiences maybe two seconds per century. They are not really traveling anywhere and the language of time travel becomes confusing. In other sf works, this situation is called temporal stasis.